In order to make sure that your event in question gets the attention and interaction that you wish to attain, you have to promote the event in a proper manner. There are a lot of effective ways to go about this. This article will discuss what steps to take prior to starting your promotional endeavours and will enlighten you on the best tips to market your event.
Get to know your target audience
Before even thinking about the different ways to promote your event, you need to define who you are looking to attract and figure out what triggers their interest. By understanding your target audience’s wants and needs, you can properly modify your marketing towards them and, most likely, be able to reach them more effectively.
To get to know your audience, start with analysing the information you already have. What has worked in the past? What promotional activities have people responded well to, and which ones have not performed as well? If your business has social media accounts, you can look at the following you have on there and try to gain information from their profiles and accounts. If you use a tool like Google Analytics, definitely go and see what information you can get from there, such as demographic, what platforms they use, where their interests lie etc.
Set clear objectives for marketing the event
When promoting any event, it is wise to set out some goals and objectives you want to achieve. This can, of course, take the shape of a number. You could want to attract a set number of new clients, or want to get a set number of clicks on an advertisement. The objectives can also be more broad. For instance, your promotional goals could be to generate leads, increase brand awareness, encourage repeat purchases or strengthen customer loyalty. It is also important to decide on the approach you’ll use for measuring and assessing the performance and results of your marketing activities. Keep in mind that your objec
tives should remain aligned with your overall marketing and business targets; they are a reflection of what you want to fulfil with the promotion.
Tips for boosting the promotion of your event
There are a ton of options to promote your event. Here are six of them that will help you get the engagement that you want:
1. Improving your SEO
Since the world thrives on the internet now, it is crucial that your audience is able to find you. That’s why your SEO needs to be up to par. To achieve this, start with deciding on what keywords and keyword phrases you need to apply in your page URL, your page title and your page headings and subheadings. Also use the chosen keywords and phrases throughout the content on said page. Remember that keeping your content relevant and new is key. Additionally, try to use descriptive links. This also gets you more search engine hits in regards to the use of keywords.
2. Event website
Having an attractive and engaging event website can most certainly assist in alluring your audience. Firstly, if a person is browsing their social media, clicks on an ad for your event, and is then brought to a website that’s bright and informative, it is likely that they will take some time to explore the website further. Secondly, it allows the person browsing to find all the information they want and need on a single webpage. This is convenient for them, which makes it more likely for them to stay. It’s all about the right balance between comfort and curiosity.
3. Social media
The biggest thing you can do to reach a very wide audience is to embrace social media and drain its possibilities as much as you can.
- Create eye-catching posts: you want to be able to stand out among the crowd. It takes less than a second to scroll past, so you have to design posts, stories and reels that make someone pause and take some time to look at it. Don’t make them too intricate. Social media users want simple posts that they can quickly scan and easily process. Make the important keywords stand out.
- If you have the chance to get some influencers to join your event promotion, definitely take it. An influencer will get your event more general awareness. This will make it travel down through multiple different audiences with different interests, and can therefore potentially attract new customers.
- What can also be beneficial is to live-stream your event. Once again, this basically makes it easier for consumers to take in, and that resonates well with an audience.
4. Personal interaction
Interacting with your audience can assist in strengthening the relationship you have with them. You can do this by personalising adverts, which can be as simple as mentioning their name. A good method for this is to create some sort of competition or challenge that relates to the event, which the audience can participate in on social media. This builds trust while also spreading more awareness about your event.
5. Create a hashtag
None of the above mentioned tips will have the biggest possible effect if you do not create a hashtag for your event. You need to incorporate this hashtag into all webpages, accounts and posts in relation to your event. Ask your audience to use the hashtag in their posts, like the above-mentioned competitions you have created. The use of a hashtag gives the audience something to remember you by.
6. Teasing your event
Leading up to the actual happening of your event, teasing bits and pieces of it can help keep people interested. This can be done by showing some shots or action from the previous series of your event, if applicable. Try to create behind-the-scenes content, showing snippets of building the venue or producing content. By generating sneak peeks you can give the participants a taste of what they’ll be receiving, which will result in them wanting more.
Remember to not do as much as possible at once. Successfully promoting any event is spread out along a gradual timeline. Continuously track the engagement you are receiving and act accordingly. These steps and tips should help you get on your way when filling out your own marketing-timeline.
This year, VIMAR has worked with events such as Mountmellick Drama Festival, Robo Riots, Shine , Leaves Festival of Writing and Music, Laois Jobs Fair, Culture Night Laois, Dublin Maker Festival and Laois Business Awards to name but a few.
Feedback from Tomas Ward – Dublin Maker Management Team: “Without your help the event would not have been the success it was. In the past our use of third-party marketing and promotion organizations had been patchy at best, and the results were similarly erratic, however, our engagement with VIMAR this year has changed my mind at least on the value that professional organizations such as yours can bring via the systematic and well-organized promotion of an event such as ours. We are certain that without your professional engagement our promotion would not have been as good as it turned out to be. We’re also certain that without your well-crafted social media campaign we would never have had the attendance, the attention, and the impact the event seems to have had. This directly translates into impact for our sponsors and in turn the long-term viability of the event. So, we are very appreciative of the efforts you and the team put into Dublin Maker, it has been a very important event for us and a great success. Thank you for contributing to making this so.”
Reference – Tomas Ward – tomas.ward@gmail.com
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